Monday, November 03, 2008

The paladin has been designed around Flash of Light, just like the shaman was designed around Chain Heal. We didn't want to completely change what these classes were all about, in part because a lot of players like them as they are. We figured players who gravitate towards wanting lots of different kinds of heals can play the druid or priest. Players who want to have relatively few spells and can then focus on cooldowns, trinkets or the like can play the paladin or shaman. We think it would be dangerous for paladins to pick up Lich King and find their class had completely changed.

Sigh.

Flash of Light represents everything that is wrong with the Paladin healer. Cleric. Clothadin. Healbot. Boring. 2-button spam. Standing at the back of the raid. Completely changing the playstyle from levelling. Not hitting things with a giant hammer.

I wrote this in 2006, two and a half years ago, and it still applies today:

Flash of Light is the real problem with the paladin class. A single cast of FoL heals for a trivial amount, but at a trivial cost. This means that a paladin generally casts multiple FoLs in quick succession to actually do anything. I've heard Flash of Light described as a "channelled heal-over-time spell." And this is precisely what it is. The paladin stands there and channels her mana into the tank's health bar.

The problem is that if you are channelling, you cannot do anything else. And the essence of a paladin is doing multiple things at once! The mechanics of Flash of Light cut across the very grain of paladin playstyle. So remove Flash of Light in its entirety. Soloing will not miss it. PvP will not miss it. And PvE will be better for its absence.

If you really want to fix paladin healing, to make it more enjoyable, I believe that Flash of Light will have to be removed or drastically changed. I find it really disheartening that not only does Blizzard not see this, but they have deliberately designed the class around Flash of Light.

Posted by
Rohan

26 comments:

every paladin in the world knows FoL spam is problem with holy play style.

every other healer has several different kind of heals.

holy shock should have a splash heal/dmg effect. if you heal someone with a holy shock it would also heal anyone in 10 yards for 20% of holy shock heal. if holy shock is used as an attack it should also deal 20% of that dmg to anyone in 8 yards. if you use holy shock as a heal it should also deal 20% of that heal as dmg to anything in 8 yards.

holy guidance the holy spell power talent currently has no heal altering effect like the prot and ret spell power talents. i think a reasonable idea is to give it an effect like the orginal beacon of light. crit heals cause the target to radiate a aoe hot that heals anyone in 20 yards for 30% of the amount of the crit heal.

that missing 11 point prot talent? it should make consecration also heal.

purifying power in holy? it should heal who ever you cleanse for an amount equal to 80% of your spell power. it should also make holy wrath a healing spell too in addition to its udead/demon aoe effect.

you could make a major or minor glyph that makes blessing of wisdom have a health per 5 effect equal to the mp5 it gives.

in aura mastery's place a new heal spell similar to binding heal. its a flash of light style spell you heal a target with it and you get a hot on your self equal to 33% of the amount healed by the heal over 10 seconds that can stack 3 times.

and also make beacon of light cheap with a significant amount of native dispell resistance. it should work more on effective healing. not all of the over heal but maybe 60% of the amount of the over heal hits the beacon too in addition to any actuall effective healing.

sacred cleansing is a really really weak talent i think instead a new hand spell. hand of spell warding. it would cause forbearance and allow no damaging magic in and no damaging magic out. it would also be effected by the guardians favor talent in prot. just like hand of protection clears all physical debuffs. hand of spell warding would clear all magic/disease/poison debuffs.

That is exactly why I stopped healing and went to Ret. Holy is boring. It is simply furiously clicking FoL and maybe HL or HS if needed.

The way the devs seem to be handling everything for Paladins make me really think they just want them to be the underdog period. Well, except Prot, they have been getting a lot of much deserved love. But they have been the victim of indirect nerfs too thanks to Ret changes.

And yeah, the grass is always greener, but hell, Paladins are starting to look like a barren wasteland compared to the well manicured golf course that the other full hybrid class enjoys. I speak of course of Druids. But it seems to be ok that they get an additional DPS mode (ranged and melee), and they can do everything else as well or better then Pallies. Thats fine.

As an example, I got my ass handed to me by a Resto Druid in AV today. My "burst" could not keep up with his HPS, and his damage output was more then enough to wear me out all on his own. I blew through my Bubble, Trinkets, Health Pot, Healthstone, and LoH. I used FoL procs whenever they were up. I couldn't use Wings anymore to try and seal the deal (see hotfix), and SoCasino just wasn't cooperating. The fight took about 5 minutes total. It wouldn't have taken nearly as long if I didn't burn up everything I had. Sure, he spent some time stunned, but it didn't matter, since my burst has been nerfed so bad. Oh yeah, the Druid finished the fight with full health, about 1/4 mana.

There are two issues I have with that fight. The first is I could never even think about pulling that off as a Holy Pally. Sure I could survive for a long time, but the chances of me being able to DPS enough to take someone out while trying to out heal their damage is slim to none.

The second issue I have is with the crusade to remove Paladin burst from the table for PvP. What am I suspposed to use if not that? Do I kindly ask the mean Druid, Shaman, or Priest to please stop healing so my sustained DPS can have a chance to work? Do I whisper a silent prayer to the RNG God in hopes that SoComm procs when I need it too? Even Glyphed, SoComm is not a guarantee of damage, and running SoM just helps the enemy kill you faster.

So does that mean that once again my little Pally has no hopes of being usable in Arena because I have nothing to offer other then a warm body? Is the only BG for Ret Pallies going to be AV because there are boss fights where we can use our shiny new sustained DPS?

if you want to smash stuff go retri if you want to get smashed prot if you want to keep people who get smashed alive go holy.

Do priests complain that healing is boring? Yeah a few. Most of them went shadow in TBC.

I have a paladin and i quite enjoy the occasional AV holy specced. I can keep a lot of ppl alive for a very long time, i don't get instakilled by dps, my survivability is enormous (compared to my priest). Yeah in arenas holy paladins do lack (no mana burn, very limited CC) but honestly, you can't have everything. They say they'll try and fix it in WotLK - give them some time and see if they can pull it off.

It really has nothing to do with the xpac. Druids are the most comparable class to Paladins since they are the only other class that gets the Heal, Tank, DPS trinity all in one class. Druids can out heal burst and sustained damage. Certainly they are not invincible, but they don't need to be. Obviously they can do just fine without that crutch of an ability. To top it off, they can dps well enough to take out an enemy while specced Resto.

My contention is that this is not balanced against Paladins who cannot change roles as well on the fly (ie changing forms), while also having fewer tools to deal with different situations. In order to change roles, we have to change specs. And as a reward for spending the gold to respec we are rewarded with..... well not much.

And yes, you may be right. Maybe healing is not for me. I have done it, and its boring so I smash faces now (actually I set people on fire with my Warlock now, but I digress). PvE, dps is fine for the moment, mana regen is making me a little nervous though, especially with the incoming JoW nerf. My concerns are not PvE though.

Right now I look toward PvP. After all, most of this nerfing has been due to PvP issues, real or perceived. So, why shouldn't Paladins be concerned? After all, the only thing that is going to change between 70 and 80 for Paladins is gear. So essentially we must rely on scaling to see us through Battlegrounds and Arenas. We get no new tools or damage abilites or heals for the two primary PvP specs (Holy and Ret) between now and then.

With that said, if there is no burst (we are too bursty) or additional abilities to have more control, what is there? Again, are we to kindly as the other team to stop fighting so I can get a few SoComm procs off? I guess as a Holy Pally you are just expected to get pummeled until you get a Holy Shock crit so you can move around again and heal. God forbid you have an escape or more mobility.

Which brings me back to Druids. Druids have mobility. They have burst. They have control. They have survivability. They have options. They have escapes via their shapeshift. And this can all be done via Resto. Sure they give up some of that by going Feral or Balance, but those are all viable for Arena and especially viable for BGs.

However, for a Holy or Ret Paladin to have such things is ludacris. After all we have Bubble.

And to hit a few of your points, no we can't have it all. But Druids can, who should by all rights have less then we do since they are more of a hybrid then we are. I think we would be happy with "some" at this point.

The worst part is giving Ret what they did right out of the gate, and then go through all this crap over the last few weeks. Talk about changing horses mid stream. We were released with burst. Then we are too bursty. We are supposed to have blue rage bar. Then we are supposed to worry about mana. We are supposed to be able to off heal. Then we are healing too much. We are supposed to have Wings and Bubble seperate. Now they are back together. We are supposed to be capable of 2000+ Arena ratings. Now we will be lucky to get past 1650. Hypocrisy much?

To address your next point, how much more time? Well, we gave them from the time Beta started until now. So are we supposed to give them until May 2009 to work things out? That is about the same time frame. Surely it won't happen by November 13, that is only a few days away now. A sweeping change to the Paladin class at this point is unlikely at best. Can you imagine the whining and crying from the other 9 classes if we got something new at this point? I am going to guess we won't see any real fixes until The Emerald Dream expansion goes into Beta. And who knows when that will be.

And to your last point, enraging now or at level 80 is irrelevant. Unless you know about some secret squirrel ability that we are getting at Level 80, then nothing is changing. Therefore, whining now is perfectly viable since the only things that are going to change are the numbers on the stat sheet.

I would agree with you if it wasn't for one thing. What could you give paladins instead of designing the class around FoL, that the other healers don't have?

I don't want to be a priest, or a shaman, I like FoL spam, thats why I rolled a paladin. I enjoy it. If I wanted to always swing a big hammer, I'd go ret.

I am having the most fun with my Holy Paladin as ever with 3.0. I smile everytime I snipe a large heal from a priest with my 1 second Infusion + Holy Light. Holy Shock is the best it has ever been, offensively and defensively. FoL is our bread and butter.

Most of the time I agree with you, and I love your blog, but this time. I do not.

FoL isn't the true problem. With the way healing works in WoW, the priests that learned how to fight, they can't afford to fight.

Hitting things costs time, mana, and concentration. Healing is set up in such a reactive manner, so, heal NOW or you all die, that none of those resources can be spared. Oh sure, you can play as a paladin when the tank is overgeared and barely needs healing anyway, but that's well, a tank that barely needs healing.

Changing how paladins heal won't fix the way all healers heal. We're all still in this box. It's like a box of toys, except they're possessed by demons and exorcism keeps saying invalid target.

Until effective health is taken out back behind the barn and beaten to death, healing will continue to be cursed as a stressful and menial.

Imagine if tanks had to manually block, timing it to match incoming swings. Imagine if one missed block meant death and a wipe. Wouldn't tanking be really miserable? That's healing. Until that changes, nothing can be done to save ANY healing spec.

I really feel for all paladin healers, but what GhostCrawler said is pretty simple:

Holy Paladin was created for dumb but reliable people. They don't have to think, they don't have to have skills, all they have to do is be online at raid time, buff the raid according to PallyPower and put on the aura decided by the class leader, than mash one button until the people start screaming "YESS!" or "F...!".

Blizzard wants the dumb being able to play and also to raid, since it brings them lot of $15. It's too bad if you leveled a class with love and dedication just to find out your class is meant for kids.

You can go ret/prot or reroll. Ghostcrawler clearly stated its for "Players who want to have relatively few spells"

BTW upkeeping triple lifeblooms on 3 tanks is not more funny than spamming FoL (granted, it at least give some feeling of accomplishment and "I can do it, most cannot")

leave it to Gevlon to give us the Goblin point of view :P I can't say I completely disagree, and I kinda feel like that about Ret atm. See my "Uber Ret DPS Macro of Win". Yeah, you need one button to maximize DPS and mana efficiency. Tried and tested. Sad but true.

Hi, I rerolled a paladin a couple of months ago with the purpose of becoming a healer in WotLK. It's level 66 now so I might miss a few points when I write this as I don't have the full picture of paladins yet.

Anyway, about holy paladins in raids. Yes, it might be boring to revolve your playing around FoL. But you have to realise this is not unique for holydins. I have tried a mage and warrior (both as tank and dps) in raids. Basically they all get boring in one way or another. Even though resto shamans rocked in late TBC people got bored of that too (I just lost one due to boredom in my guild).

Wether a fight is fun or not depends more on the abilities of the boss you're killing. If you're a mage and all you have to do is stand still and nuke that's boring. Same goes for a fury or prot warrior. The fun begins when an encounter actually forces you to think, like for example Hydross.

As I said I haven't raided with my paladin yet, but I would think a boss encounter where you have to move around is the big challenge for us becuase our main heals aren't instant. Frustrating? Yes, but at least you have to start and think. This is where my idea of fun comes from. On my mage it was pretty much similar since my main damage spells weren't instant, so on bosses where mobility was an issue I really had to think about how to position and move around to launch my fireballs most effectively.

gevlon, i think you are actually partially correct. I know some people who should be put into this category (dumb but reliable) - but in the endgame today (pre 3.0 nerf-patch), a raid could not afford those people. you need movement, situational awareness, the abilty to play mutliple specs, the ability to collect multiple sets of gears and to intelligently set up this gear, etc.So - the days of the dumb FoL-Spam Pally are actually over for quite a long time now. Sure, you could still play the Dumbadin in 5-Mans, entry level Raids and easy Heroics - however, this does not mean that serious raiding Healadins don't need more intelligent tools in their arsenal.

To get rid of FoL is probably not the right way, because you need this tool for a quite large amount of the Paladin population. But there is the absolute need for more diversity in healing spells, especially for the endgame.

I don't have much hope for this to happen tho, this is why Healing will only be my Off-Spec in WotLk and i will be tanking my way through Naxxramas. This is not because i don't like healing in general, this is because tanking is so much more fun at the moment.

I don't really think Druid shifting is really as much of a factor in this comparison as you are making it to be. Yes, a Resto Druid can switch to Bear when being attacked, but all that does is give them almost as much armour as you've already got.

A Resto Druid isn't really changing roles any more then a Holy Pally who suddenly tried to tank or deal damage does, except that the Pally can also still try to heal. The Druid cannot as soon as they shift to another form, (ignoring caster form, but caster form is also where they lose all their defenses).

And you know what? Seriously, I'm always really annoyed at any PvP discussion which revolves entirely around "Me vs. him". That's not the way PvP was, is, or will be balanced (to a degree). PvP was and always will be a team effort. If your Holy is having troubles killing someone... maybe you should be working with a partner, hmm? You really should not be surprised when any given 1v1 engagement seems a little lopsided, because the game literally is not balanced with that in mind. Really, most aspects of the game are balanced assuming a standard party (or 4 DPS/1 heal).

I must say that while I enjoy your blog today I have to disagree with you.

I think it's all about perspective. If you enjoy the challenge of healing nad keeping the raid alive, then healing is not boring.. quite the opposite in fact.

I leveled Ret until 60 and didn't really raid pre-BC much beyond MC and ZG.. Once TBC dropped I specc'd holy and have been so ever since... and I love it!

I htink it's a matter of over simplification to say that all we do is stand in one spot and spam two buttons. There's a challenge for sure to moving and adjusting to ensure you're in range of the moving tank or DPS.. catching those damage spikes and keeping the tank up until someone can drop a bomb on him, keeping the judgements up on the target the whole time, watching the threat meters and throwing out hands on those who are getting a bit close to the tank, calling out adjusments to the raid if needed, etc..

I've raided all of the content through BT so while I have no experience in SWP, I can safely say that it's not been a boring ride.

Now does the 'old' content get a bit stale when farming?? Of course, but that happens with any class. I've raided my alt mage and can safely say that it get's boring on him as well...

Again, it's all about perspective.. you personally find Ret more fun and exciting.. excellent! I and apparently quite a few others find Holy the same way. It's an amazing challenge to keep up with the damage and keep everyone alive during a 25 man raid.. especially with any amount of AoE damage. Saying that we need to completely eliminate one of our main heals and rework the entire class I think is a bit off.

To Gevlon - You're an idiot. Read my post and tell again how we're a class for 'dumb and reliable' people.. Have you ever raided endgame on a Holy Paladin? If not your words are mere speculation from an outsider.

Finally.. ANY class can get boring. I watched our MT one day while over at his house and he was literally just mashing six keys over and over with no regard to order... how is that fun? Now he enjoys it immensely while I would find that terribly boring.

On Paladin healing....it sucks. The first character I leveled from 60 to 70 was a paladin. The main reason being was that my Healbot paladin was almost ensured a raid spot. Also at that time the Paladin was a super powerfull tank healer thanks to getting 100% mana back on crits.

As of current I have absolutely NO reason to continue my Paladin towards 80. Even if I did, I would spec Protection. Holy is broke, Ret is broke. What a clue on how broke Holy is? I can spec my paladin right now as Holy, and put on my s3/1000+ heal gear and my heals hit for SLIGHTLY more then the my Pally spec Ret with s1 Ret gear. I'm looking at 5k vs. 4.5k holy light, and 1.8k vs. 1.4k FOL. Not to mention critting a heal as a Retadin heals like a freakin beast, and my crit with Ret is over 30%, while with holy gear it is around 20%. I would never run out of mana healing as a Ret pally either thanks to judgements of the wise, but come nerf today who knows?

I guess I just feel Blizzard has really desotryed the Paladin. Patch 3.0 made me want to play again. Running my Ret paladin again I was having a blast. Yes, it was slightly OP, but only because of good burst damage and divine shield. Nerfing ret to the ground is not the answer.

I had written a long analytical comment, but then got annoyed, again, with the one-sided whining that seems to be everywhere these past few weeks.

Feral druids are still not viable in arenas, bears no longer have their massive armor numbers, cats don't have an AoE attack. Rogues complaining about how hybrid classes will take away their raid spots. Shamans complaining about their damage output and how they are no more than buffbots in arenas, elemental DPS turrets, how enhancement can't close the gap to do their burst. Warlock DPS was destroyed apparently, and I think someone murdered arcane viability in PvE.

Oh, and all the 51-point talents stink. And Blizzard hates at least half of us, and there's no way anyone at Blizz actually plays our class, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this to us.

Something fun to realize that it's broken is Repentence :). You cant use Repentence on any shapeshifted target because it - to repentence - doesn't think that this is a humanoid target. So you cant use it on druids or shamans unless they are in their humanoid form. ;)

I'm not saying that healing cannot be fun or challenging. I just don't think that the "low-power, high-efficiency spell + high-power, low-efficiency spell" model really fits the paladin class.

I think it actively works against the other paladin mechanics. It might be a good match for another class, but it is not a good match for paladins.

For those of you saying just go prot or ret, it's not that easy. Very few paladins just get to tank/dps. We almost always have to switch back to healing at some point, just because heals are so rare. At one point in TBC, 90% of all raiding paladins were Holy.

Healing is also part of the paladin. I want to heal. I just want to heal in a paladin fashion.

Also, I'm not sure what it has to do with this post, but Repentance has never worked with druid/shaman forms. I'm pretty sure I posted about it way back when I was running WSG and shaman/druids were the flag carriers of choice. But the Hunter's Scare Beast will work.

I normally play a prot pally and love it. I have tried healing with my pally on a number of occasions and really didn't enjoy it. I do think that pally healing could be very interesting with a couple of changes...

1) make consecrate heal party members with a holy talent. 2) make FoL and HL insta-cast. This would match up with the prot/ret pallys

I think this would make the pally class a totally different and exciting healer... different than any other healing class in game.

I'm sorry but it really seems like you need some perspective when it comes to pvp. Your comment going against a resto druid seems like you feel you should be able to go to any class and smack them down with no problem. You said yourself the fight took 5 minutes which means the druid wore you down and this is how a pvp resto druid will play. You are burst they are survivability next time choose your fights better.

You comment about a holy paladin vs resto druid really made me laugh. I've done arenas where it has come down to me and another resto one on one and we fought for 1.5 hours before his partner created a lvl 1 on my server and we negotiated a /roll to decide who wins. 2 healers should never be able to kill eachother and unless one is really stupid it won't happen.

In a 1v1 match up if you had go against a holy paladin you would have had an equal difficulty in trying to kill him. PvP holy paladins are designed around not having the mobility. 100% resistance to spell pushback reduction time in stuns and silences the class is designed to be a rock and heal in 1 spot.

Finally as far as pally vs other classes healing again some perspective may help. I play a 70 pally druid and priest and am lvling my shammy up atm. I enjoy healing and every class has its strengths and weakness.

I agree the class could use some more tricks especially when it comes to aoe healing but I think the holy light glyph helps alot with this and beacon of light is incredible for doing raid and tank healing.

Part of the issue here is Blizzard's poor expression for their vision of the class (arguably, other classes as well) throughout the experience — on the character creation screen, the class information pages, etc.

In EverQuest, the Paladin was a knight that very much fit some of the descriptions on this blog. Though he possessed direct healing abilities, he was most effective when he prevented his companions from coming to harm in the first place. In an emergency, he could use a variety of fast-casting, high-threat group heals to save his friends from certain death: a healing mechanic much more akin to the traditional Paladin concept than Flash of Light spam.

Though the Flash of Light mechanic is demoralizing to the class when you look at it from that angle, it has also become an essential mechanism for the way we heal. Without group heals, we need to rely on stacking spell haste procs and lighting up the group to cope with aoe damage bursts.

In this way, it's funny that Blizzard's solution to Paladin healing was not to eliminate Flash of Light, but rather, allow us to cast it much faster under the right circumstances.

Despite all the hate of itI'm going to be using the FoL glyph once I reach 80. I'll be using holy light as my main heal, holy shock as my emergency heal and keep popping sacred shield, holy light and judgements in between. It's gonna be more fun, and will probably make me a better, more mana efficient healer since i'll be healing reactively instead of proactively, which is what Blizzard seems to want us to do.

"I'll be using holy light as my main heal, holy shock as my emergency heal and keep popping sacred shield, holy light and judgements in between. It's gonna be more fun, and will probably make me a better, more mana efficient healer"

Umm.. no. You use HL as your primary heal and you will definitely have more fun.. for about two minutes then you'll be dry and sitting there watching everyone die around you.

I cannot see any reasonable way that you think using HL as a primary heal will make you more mana efficient.. o.O

Good luck to you and may you never heal a PuG I have the misfortune to be in. Then again, I don't PuG very often and whne I do, I'm the healer.. /shrug

I'm rather bemused at the fact that they specifically nerfed Lifebloom because it was the only spell resto druids were using 90% of the time. As they've said, "lifebloom was the correct answer to almost every situation" and they wanted there to be more of a choice.

I specifically rolled a priest when I wanted to be a healer, because I didn't like the way the other three healing classes were so dependent on one heal. I wanted to have a lot of heals to choose from, and not just be spamming the same button over and over. But now, with the changes to druids, I consider them equal to or better than priests. I'm probably abandoning my priest in favor of my druid as my new Wrath main, because almost anything my priest can do, my druid can do better.

And yet, they don't nerf flash of light because they like the fact that it's the only heal paladins ever use?

I've since tried both paladin (normally ret) and shaman (normally elemental) healing and found them effective but boring. I was even a little annoyed at shaman healing last week, because I had so few spells that my (normally crammed to the brink) action bars were practically empty. Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave, Chain Heal, Riptide. Okay... now what do I put in the other buttons? I was frantically searching my spellbook and coming up short.

Wouldn't it be interesting if they made the Glyph of Flash of Light what the spell was like at base?